Reading Under the Willow Tree

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A free copy of this book was sent to me by the publisher in exchange for a review.

*WARNING: THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SOME SLIGHT SPOILERS*

Kelsey’s Song is one of those strange books. I didn’t like it, it didn’t interest me but I kept reading until the end anyway. This is the type of book that I normally quit but I found that I just couldn’t.

Plot/storyline
This was one of the big problems for me. Firstly, it was completely unbelievable. The adults in this book seemed to go around doing whatever they wanted even though they were parents, honestly these peoples baby sitters must earn thousands. I understand that trying to achieve your goal of being a musician or anything else is important but so is putting food on the table for your children. There is such a thing as priorities but in this book everyone seems to get everything they want. Secondly, nothing seems to happen throughout the whole book. There is a romance right at the end but that is essentially it. There are various moments of conflict (true parentage, JD’s mum, the guys in the band) but none of the come to fruition, they are introduced and then left. I was sure that something exciting or dramatic was going to happen but nothing did.

Writing
The writing in this book was all a little too much for me. I wouldn’t call it info dumping but there was a lot of unnecessary descriptions of character actions. I didn’t need to know everything these people were doing all the time. Also, there was a thread that runs through the whole book where one character has allowed the other character to believe something different to the truth. That is fine except that it wasn’t explained very well to the reader which left me at one point utterly confused, also at the end it was just easily resolved and I didn't see the point in it. I did like the way the children were written they were one of the better parts of the book.

Characters
Kelsey is just too perfect. She is pretty, funny and smart. She is a good parent, a good friend, a great photographer and is really good at photo shopping (which she tells us about in agonising detail). Everybody loves her and she can even run a band, get them gigs, do promotion for them even manage to maybe get them a record deal. She is also great at giving advice and fixes JD and his daughter’s relationship whilst putting his mother firmly in her place. Kelsey is not a bad person but what really irritates me about her is how she literally does anything and everything for JD. Andie, his kid may as well live with her, she gives him her garage for his band (then lets them be rude to her whilst they are using it) if he asks for something he gets it, sometimes he doesn’t even have to ask. It just really bugged me. JD is no better. In the beginning he was going through hard times so I let him off but as the story went on I just couldn’t feel sorry for him anymore. He has a horrible temper and a rather childish attitude at times. When he gets into arguments with Kelsey not only does he refuse to listen but he also says things like ‘I hate you’ which I find unnecessary and immature.

Romance
The romance takes a really long time to get going, it is right towards the end of the book that things kick off. Because of this the romance seemed very rushed to me. Everything happened in the last few chapters. Even the writing felt rushed as though the author couldn’t wait to finish. If the first 70% of this book had been spent really building the tension between JD and Kelsey then it might have been ok but it wasn’t so the romance and the sex scenes fell flat. Everything moved so fast. They went from friends to happy family in the blink of an eye. I would have preferred to see them grow into the new roles they had for each other. The sex scenes were ok. They were standard they weren’t tame but didn’t make my heart beat faster either.

This book clearly wasn’t for me. I didn’t like is and struggled to get through it all. It reminded me of some of the Fan Fiction you see you there, overdone with little going on.